You couldn't make this up. According to numerous furious reports on Steam and Reddit, many PC gamers who bought a retail copy of Black Ops II are unable to install the second disc because it contains Mass Effect 2 installation files.

Yes, you read that correctly. Several users have complained that installation has ground to a halt after installing the first disc and being prompted for the second. Upon closer inspection, the second disc contains a 7 gigabyte file entitled ME2_RTP and some autorun executables, which is recognised as Mass Effect 2. [via PCGamesN]

Affected customers are still able to download the game from Steam, though will have to do so in its entirety.

Since EA publish the Mass Effect series, this (hilarious) cock-up must presumably be on the manufacturing end - and someone is probably going to get sued.

We'll be bringing you our Black Ops II review in the very near future, but until then, has anyone else suffered from this issue?